Homestead and School
My great-great-grandfather, Enoch Parr, started his original preemption homestead application on February 20, 1874, for 160 acres of land in Oak Grove Township, Nebraska, with his wife, Harriett Fish. Unfortunately, Harriett died a couple of months later. Despite the rigors of building a home, planting the required crops, and his health problems from his civil war service, Enoch advocated for a school and was on the first school board for Oak Grove Township. The school was called Sunny Hill and was in District 29.
Less than one year after he arrived in Nebraska, they had the first school board meeting to approve the building of a sod school, furniture, and fuel for the school. They hired a teacher for a four-month term. Enoch’s children were registered in the school, and he remained actively involved in the school board until 1904.
The school term was 3 or 4 months long in the early years. Farming duties took precedence, and the farmers had limited funds to pay for teachers. Eventually, the school term was six to eight months long.
Harriett’s brother, Robert Fish, homesteaded in the neighboring township of Turkey Creek.
Teaching – A Family Affair
The sod school was replaced by a stone building in 1880.
In 1881, Robert Menagh taught for 2 and 1/2 months. Enoch’s second son Samuel married Robert’s daughter Ida in 1889. Samuel taught in the school before and after his marriage. Ida also taught at Sunny Hill after her marriage. Samuel and Ida left Nebraska so Samuel could attend medical school.
George Gessford married Enoch’s eldest daughter, Effie Ann, in 1885. Effie Ann died after giving birth to her son, Charles, in 1886. The stone schoolhouse was replaced with a frame building in 1886. George then taught for four months in 1887, the entire school term that year.
Minnie Fish, Robert Fish’s granddaughter, taught for three months at Sunny Hill in 1904. The frame schoolhouse had started deteriorating in 1895, but there was never enough money to do adequate repairs.
Sunny Hill didn’t start recording graduations (8th grade) until 1904, so none of Enoch’s children are listed. But in 1914, my grandmother Mary Parr, her brother Francis Parr, and her cousin Harriet Harger (Nora Parr Harger’s daughter) graduated from 8th grade.
My grandmother, Mary, went away to Normal School and then returned and taught at Sunny Hill in 1920 and 1921. Mary’s younger sister Margaret graduated from Sunny Hill in 1921. Unfortunately, I don’t recognize the graduates’ names after that.
In 2013, all that was left of the school was the entrance stairs.
The Homestead National Historical Park is in Beatrice, Nebraska. See more family homestead stories at https://explorewithliz.com/tag/homestead/.
